Serge Van de Put is a Belgian artist born in Antwerp in 1958. A great traveler, he currently resides in Italy.

«I started working on illuminated signs, and then started my own business as a graphic designer, working a bit on events. I painted and started working with tires. I have a continuing need for creativity.»

"Sleffer", 2013

"Gorila / Gorilla"

Serge has been using this material for several years, in a totally liberating way, breaking with traditional rules and guidelines. He wants to take it to another level ignoring all boundaries. Serge realizes that artists also have a mission to innovate. They have to be free to create without restrictions and explore new materials. At a minimum, it can be said that his artistic language, is completely innovative. To him, art cannot and should not be the repetition of a find or an accomplishment. Year by year he is developing his own artistic vocabulary with great expertise.

"Oveja / Sheep"

«At the root of all the sculptures is a metal structure. This structure is the most important. If the skeleton is not well proportionated, the result will not be what was expected.. The tire is the dress. To work the metal parts are removed, it is broken down into each of the parts and fixed with screws. Every time I find scrap tires I imagine which part of the sculpture can match. Each piece is selected for its texture to allow some well thought movement in each work. All my black sculptures are motorcycle tires, the colored ones are mainly bicycle tires.»

"Gorila, cabeza, detalle / Gorilla, Head, detail"

Although most of his work concentrates on animal themes, he also creates human figures and always with a great sense of humor. To Serge art and humor work very well together. His work is alway generating expressions of amazement and it demonstrates that art is not, and can never be, an exact science. His sculptures amaze and move people; nobody is indifferent to his work.

"Caballo / Horse"

"Youki", 2013

«One is always influenced by great artists. I really like Tony Cragg and Anish Kapoor.»

Almost nobody knows that Serge was a classmate of Jean Fabre and that he greatly admires artists like Wim Delvoye, Sam Dillemans, Roger Raveel, James Ensor, Fred Bervoets, and so many others. (see below)

"Basset Hound"

"Hipopótamo / Hippo", 2013

«Initially there's not an ecological motivation in my work, but people appreciate working with tires, the recycle to create sculptures.»

Information from artist's website, from an interview published by L.I.Art you can fully read (in French) here, and from several interviews in video (see below). Also from a text by the art critic Gilbert Putteman you can fully read here.

Roger Henri Kamiel, Ridder (*) Raveel was a Belgian painter born in 1921, whose work is often associated with pop art because of its depiction of everyday objects. Raveel's style evolved throughout his career, from abstract to figurative.

Raveel was trained in the academies of Ghent and Deinze. After 1952 he began to use large white spaces. A central theme in his work was the opposition of fiction and reality. In 1976 he created a large wall painting in the Brussels metro station Mérode. Portraits of his first wife and favourite model Zulma, to whom he was married until her death in 2009, were a running motif throughout his work.

After high school, Dillemans studied at several academies in Belgium and abroad. He obtained the French Higher National diploma of Plastic Expression Option Art. For some years he has been teaching drawing and painting at the Antwerp Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and was a guest professor at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts of Flanders, also in Antwerp. He now lives and works in Borgerhout, Antwerp.

The work of Dillemans has deep roots in European painting tradition. According to Dillemans, painters such as Vincent van Gogh, Peter Paul Rubens, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres and Pablo Picasso are not artists of the past, but artists of today and they continue inspire him in his work. To Dillemans it does not matter when something was painted, but how it was painted. The method of painting, how paint and brushes are used to seek or construct a striking image, is timeless.

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